New to eLearning Development? Read this first!
I love Camtasia! I use it regularly at work for anything from simple screen recordings to long informational videos. Everything I’ve published to Pollak Library eLearning on YouTube was made with Camtasia.
Camtasia is a video editing program, but you can create surprisingly robust interactive mini-courses using its hotspots feature. Whether you want to create professional-looking videos, or dip your toe into the eLearning waters, this is a great program to get started with.
Get Started With Camtasia
First, download the free trial of Camtasia if you haven’t already. I also recommend giving SnagIt a shot, it’s a great, simple image editing program. Jing is the free, limited version of Camtasia.
Video Tutorials
Do you have access to Lynda.com? I would work through the Camtasia courses. They have practice files for you to use.
Work Through a Handbook
Alternatively, I also recommend finding a copy of Camtasia 9: The Essentials. This book will walk you through learning Camtasia and also offers practice files. I use the Adobe Captivate edition for teaching students in our Master of Instructional Design & Technology program, it’s a really great book.
Get Started with Free Graphics
There’s not much in the way of free Camtasia templates out there, unfortunately, but Camtasia is fairly simple to pick up.
I highly recommend Pixabay for stock graphics and videos, all of which are public domain/CC0. Remember to respect copyright when selecting images for your elearning!
Conclusion
Making videos is really fun! It’s a useful skill that allows you do make and ship useful tutorials very quickly, with a low learning curve. You don’t need a special server for plain videos, you can just pop them onto YouTube. However, if you do take advantage of Camtasia’s interactive features, you DO have to load the published files onto a server or into an LMS. To do this, follow my guide on Sharing Your eLearning Courses.